Programmer behind YouPorn empire arrested in Belgium - <AUTHOR> http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sueddeutsche.de%2Fwirtschaft%2Fverdacht-auf-steuerhinterziehung-youporn-chef-ist-festgenommen-worden-1.1546865 <comment><USER3> I've always mused with the idea of creating a user-submitted-content based porn website.

The base code can be whipped out in a few days, and getting traffic for that kind of thing seems to be super easy. The goal would then be to make minor money through smart advertising (most porn websites today are usability hell, with every single white space covered in ads; i'm sure one could do some smart conversion optimizations there), and major money through acquisition when the brand is built.

I feel that this might be a "low hanging fruit" kind of venture because of the social stigma associated with it ("I'm CEO for a social cupcake sharing app" is so much more cooler than "I'm CEO for a porn site"), but I might just be naive about the whole thing.

<comment><USER4> I question how much of the "user submitted porn" is actually user submitted. Flickr, YouTube, etc i buy that all the content is submitted by users. Porn sites, it seems far more likely that the content is mostly uploaded by paid staff. It's hard for me to believe that there are people who see a porn they like and think "wow, I should submit this to youporn". If you're going to build a porn site, the biggest part of the job is probably seeding it with content.

<comment><USER5> The major tube sites from the looks of things are primarily dominated by other sites trying to fight for traffic via branded videos, or by cutting a deal with the owner to have branded pages that not only showcase their uploaded content, but a few banners here and there to try and push half satisfied viewers to the core content hub.

I'd guess that the tube site is getting some sort of service fee for allowing the sites to have a "premium" service, as well as some sort of kick back depending on the conversion rate from leads generated by the content (why the premium videos are generally listed higher).

If you think that 1) the videos are legit and that guy just happened to stumble across those two girls in the woods, then you're also going to also believe that 2) most of the content is amateur. - It's a sad truth that the industry preys on the weak minded.

I'd say that a fair amount is self-uploaded (via content bought from providers, or produced specifically for the site), but a majority is uploaded from other content houses to try to promote themselves. Think Free to air TV... average crap shows, filled with 80% advertising.

<comment><USER6> I don't think that people who buy adult content are weak minded.

I think that they view "amateur" sites as a 'fantasy' portrayal of reality like television. Yes, TV shows and adult sites don't try to break the 4th wall but that's to be expected in a drama.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The guy has to be making crazy bank. Wonder why he didnt just pay his taxes. When you are bringing in a likely 100m a year, what difference will another 10m make? I think the guys behind huge sites like this just have weird personality's that make them like to hack every system they can which obviously ends up in situations like this.

<comment><USER8> taxes on 100m are not 10m more like 45m as the top tax rate in germany is 45%. The 100m a year is gross revenue also not net profit so he is probably pulling in a lot less after operating costs. People just get greedy and dont want to pay their taxes

<comment><USER9> Just one note: 45% is the top marginal tax rate. No one is actually taxed such that they lose 45% of their income through personal income taxes. The effective (average) tax rate will be much, much less.

EDIT: not to mention lower taxes due to deductions, capital gains, legal tax shelters.

<comment><USER10> At 100 million, it'll be closer to 45% than any other bracket.

<comment><USER11> Taxes on that would probably be about 44,850,000.

<comment><USER12> Do you pay taxes after the whole income or just (income -expenses)?

<comment><USER11> It depends, corporations pay on just profits, so income - expenses. The original poster was talking as if the 100m was pure profit, though. Also, I'm not German, but this is how the tax system works in Greece, the UK and many other countries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Be sure to watch the video with Fabian Thylmann on the bottom of the page - <USER2> direct linked here: <http://youtu.be/VCQCsWOivGo>

</comment><comment><USER14> Crap, that's my boss =/

<comment><USER15> Not anymore.

<comment> shawn-butler Probably only briefly. The only thing that kept Martha Stewart from retaking the helm of her company was an agreement to settle a civil suit the terms of which included a 5 year ban.

Do the criminal penalties for tax evasion in Germany also entail such a ban? In the US, it is fines and imprisonment only.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I sometimes don't understand how American Porn Tubes can survive with 18 USC § 2257: <http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2257>

<comment><USER17> > is produced in whole or in part with materials which have been mailed or > shipped in interstate or foreign commerce, or is shipped or transported or > is intended for shipment or transportation in interstate or foreign commerce

You don't ship anything made with materials -- the videos are all digital, so there is no shipping or transportation going on at all -- so what you are doing doesn't fall under that requirement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> [http://gawker.com/5967224/porn-king-fabian-thylmann- arrested...](http://gawker.com/5967224/porn-king-fabian-thylmann-arrested-for- tax-evasion-in-belgium)

</comment><comment><USER19> It was as if a million moans cried out in ecstasy and were suddenly silenced.

</comment><comment><USER20> Alas, Hacker News - - - I knew ye well.

(poor subject for this site)

<comment><USER21> I find your reaction fascinating. You find the topic of porn _so disturbing_ that a mere (very dry) discussion of its business side ruins the entire experience of HN for you?

On a side note, you may be naif about hacker culture. On one hand, a lot of hackers consume porn (by virtue of the fact that a large percentage of the general population does). On the other, we tend to be curious about stuff, even stuff that is considered a "poor subject" by conventional social norms. We're not that big on conventional social norms...

<comment><USER22> > even stuff that is considered a "poor subject" by conventional social norms. > We're not that big on conventional social norms

Hmm, if you want to avoid conventional social norms, then NOT talking about porn on the internet is the way to go, I would say. The world is awash with people talking about porn.

<comment><USER12> Yeah the Internet is full of porn, but where do you find meta discussion about porn sites? You know business opportunities, history and stuff life that.

<comment><USER23> Very good point there. That still seems to be a big taboo.

OT: Proud to be German today :-)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Apple Does Controlled Leaks - <AUTHOR> http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/how_apple_does_controlled_leaks/ <comment><USER2> What's more interesting to me is how they avoid unintended leaks. I've been told of a keycard system that knows if two different people are working on different components of a product, and won't let them into a particular room with each other at the same time, lest they put 2 and 2 together...like, for example, if one person is working on a touch screen and another is working with cell phone transmitters.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a very strange/sad way of working. At work, I have always known the end product toward which I am building. I can't imagine working with so many firewalls.

<comment><USER3> OTOH given Apple's track record, employees can probably just tell themselves, "Whatever I'm working on, someone smarter than me is overseeing it. I'm sure it will be awesome."

That's got to be more encouraging than knowing exactly what you're working on and despairing as a result.

<comment><USER4> If being treated like a child works for you, that's great. It doesn't for me.

If those rumours are true, Apple must be an incredibly stifling and frustrating place to work for smart, creative people.

<comment><USER5>
      Apple must be an incredibly stifling and frustrating place to work for smart,
      creative people.

I agree. And yet, they keep producing all this innovative stuff. It's a paradox, to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For those who missed it (I was wondering why people were now saying March):

"Apple to Ship Tablet Device in March"

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870358090457463...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703580904574638630584151614.html)

<comment><USER7> It's behind a subscription wall. Do you know what the suggested pricepoint is?

<comment><USER8> Apple's putting its toes in the water with a $1,000 price tag.

<comment><USER7> Ouch... That's about $400 more than I'd probably be willing to pay for a decent tablet. I wonder what kind of use-cases they're envisioning.

<comment><USER9> _That's about $400 more_

You could also view it as a ~$100 discount on the Mac OS X tax, if it's only $400 more than equivalent Windows or Linux tablets. Apple laptops tend to be about $500 more than similarly equipped laptops from other manufacturers (my last Dell was $626 cheaper than an almost identically equipped MacBook Pro).

Of course, I don't know what Windows and Linux-based tablets are actually going to cost, so the Mac OS X tax may be more or less on tablets. I guess we'll see when the tablets start hitting the market in reasonable numbers.

I'm not entirely sure I see the use case for a tablet at any price...though I have a netbook, and like it, and have a Kindle, and like it (but the insane battery life is a primary factor for the Kindle; a tablet won't be able to come close). So, I may figure out uses for a tablet when they're more common.

<comment><USER10> I find that some people have an Aspergers-like view on laptops. If two laptops have the same processor, HD size and RAM, then they're identical.

But of course there are other important specs like the materials used in the construction. Alluminium is more expensive than plastic and far stronger and sturdier. A thinner laptop is also much more expensive. It requires thinner DVD drives and fans. Motherboard components need to be shrunk. Need to use smaller, more expensive capacitors. A smaller, more dense battery with the same capacity. The same core temperature with a much smaller thermal envelope. Minimalist design. None of this is trivial and adds significantly to the cost.

<comment><USER9> It's OK.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This article shouldn't be surprising to anyone with their ear to the ground for Apple news, but it certainly was nice to read from the former Senior Marketing Manager for Apple.

<comment><USER12> A small slightly pedantic point, but that should be 'a Senior Marketing Manager' rather than 'the Senior Marketing Manager'.

The Senior Marketing Manager is, I imagine, a very important person. A Senior Marketing Manager is, well, a manager in the marketing department who is in some sense 'Senior'.

<comment><USER13> sigh... small pedantic point?</comment></comment></comment>


Picasa 3 Terms of Service has same problem as Chrome - <AUTHOR> http://picasa-terms.weebly.com/index.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess they have a little more work to do after propagating the Chrome changes through the 40+ languages.

[http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/update-to-google- chro...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/update-to-google-chromes- terms-of.html)</comment>


Ask HN: Does your company offer a referral program for engineering candidates? - <AUTHOR> Please respond with:<p>1. Your company's name 2. How much the employee referral bonus is (or a range depending on the type of candidate) 3. Whether or not you pay an external referral bonus and how much that is as well 4. Any details on how successful the bonus program has been? <comment><USER2> Company I am with does not. I have worked for other companies that did, but generally it was considered a pittance. Min was like $500, max was like $3000. Most people offered the person they were referring half the money as an incentive.

Companies would push the issue, telling you this a chance for your friends to work with you.

I tended to consider the offers an insult, when you considered 1) the were saving 20 to 30K per candidate, as that was what the head hunters charged. 2) headhunters do not actually know the person so they are not really vetted the way a friend would be vetted. Because who would recommend a friend who would not be a good worker? A headhunter will all day and night.

But I suppose if they offered a good incentive, people would actually recruit ANYONE not just qualified people.</comment>


A digestible introduction to the wave equation with working code - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dionyziz/wave-experiment

<comment><USER2> Very interesting

And a good example of why the 'exact' solution is often not used, because it's so slow

<comment><USER3> its not an exact solution, and actually the implementation is just very poor. highly optimised versions of this have been around for 20 years or more running with /software/ rendering.

you can boil the whole thing down to a convolution matrix type trick which a modern gpu will eat for breakfast.

i should find some time and do one of these... the quality of 'impressive webgl tech demo' seems to be about 15 years out of date in general...

<comment><USER4> It's a pedagogical exercise, not a cycle-counting contest. GPU acceleration amounts to premature optimization when your goal is learning the basic math.</comment></comment></comment>


Bill Thurston's answer to "What's a mathematician to do?" - <AUTHOR> http://mathoverflow.net/questions/43690/whats-a-mathematician-to-do/44213#44213

<comment><USER2> In case you didn't see other article on the front page, Thurston died today</comment>


DevDegree: Work at Shopify and get a free CS degree in parallel - <AUTHOR> https://devdegree.ca/ <comment><USER2> Reminder that this exists, which is a Software Engineering MSc from a reasonably well-known uni, that you're meant to do while working:

[http://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/softeng/](http://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/softeng/)

all-in cost was something like £25,000 for me including accommodation, and they're open minded about accepting people without undergraduate degrees.

EDIT: happy to answer questions by email

<comment><USER3> > they're open minded about accepting people without undergraduate degrees

[https://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/graduate/courses/msc- compute...](https://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/graduate/courses/msc-computer- science?wssl=1#content-tab--2)

> As a minimum, applicants should hold or be predicted to achieve the > equivalent of the following UK qualifications:

> a first-class undergraduate degree with honours in a subject with a > significant component of mathematics and/or computing.

So, is an undergraduate degree required or not?

<comment><USER4> > A typical applicant will have at least two years' experience in a > professional environment, and an undergraduate degree in a related subject. > However, more extensive experience may compensate for a lack of formal > qualifications, and a strong, immediately-relevant qualification may > compensate for a lack of professional experience.

[http://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/softeng/study/apply.html](http://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/softeng/study/apply.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks a lot more like an apprenticeship to me than a degree.

Which I think is fantastic, Universities are generally terrible at teaching practical skills and fantastic at teaching theory.

<comment><USER6> That's what we call 'Duales Studium' in Germany. You just do your semesters normally and in between instead of springbreak etc you work for the company.

<comment><USER7> Yes, and the founder of Shopify is originally from Germany, I bet he got inspired by that.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I guess so too. Toby told in a podcast [0] that he finished an apprenticeship as "Fachinformatiker für Anwendungsentwicklung". Though it's not the same as "Duales Studium" (which gives you an academic degree while former doesn't) I guess this program was highly influenced by his experience. Though I'm asking myself if this kind of program is common in Canada or is Shopify doing something unique here?

[0]: [https://fs.blog/tobi-lutke/](https://fs.blog/tobi-lutke/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's wonderful to see this on the front page. I'm currently a student at the Lassonde School of Engineering at York University studying software engineering and heavily involved in the school community.

The Lassonde School of Engineering opened 8 years ago with a fervour for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. I suggest folks give the school a Google search as it has rapidly developed to become a phenomenonal environment with its own startup incubator and entrepreneurshi' degree with courses from VCs. I digress, but feel free to ask me any more questions about the school.

The dev degree program started its first cohort last year actually and it now is in its second year.

It is structured so students work 20 hours a week at Shopify and take 3 courses per semester at school. Students are required to work and go to school through the summer which allows them to complete the degree in the standard four years.

My peers in the program have I said great things. One of the key parts of the program is how one switches between different teams to get a better understanding of the software engineering landscape. Moreover the mentorship is very helpful and not only developing your technical skills by yourself skills.

One question that students and parents asked me a lot is if there is a requirement to work at Shopify following the completion of the program. Luckily Shopify has made it clear that they will not be expecting students to stay once they complete their degree, but it is my intuition that many people from the program will stay on after their large time investment into the Shopify ecosystem.

Overall, I would have entered this program myself for it for engineering students as well. Sadly, the program is restricted to computer science students as the Canadian accreditation requirements for engineering are not fulfilled while in the dev degree program.

Although people may say "why do you need a degree?", it is difficult to find a job without the qualification of showing your ability to complete post- secondary in a field of candidates that did.

With initiatives such as Silicon Valley trip for students run by the Lassonde co-op Department, I am sure that lassonde will continue to innovate and engage students in meaningful ways beyond the traditional methods.

<comment><USER10> How do you feel about York's CS program in terms of helping students be competitive candidates? At some Toronto companies it sometimes feels like they prefer U Waterloo CS or Engineering grads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> i am wishing i could go back 15 years and do this now. i was dumb enough to go to an ivy league for an unrelated degree, then change careers and go thru a bootcamp, and i'm now still 100's of thousands in debt. if i was growing up today i would absolutely drop everything to do this. kudos to shopify but it really feels a little bittersweet.

<comment><USER12> > now still 100's of thousands in debt

Is that hyperbole, or literally your debt is that much?

<comment><USER11> not hyperbole. there were some compounding factors i didnt mention, but the bulk is quite literally college tuition. i dont need to put my screwed up financial life on display but it's the single worst decision of my life, all for imagined prestige. i'm lucky enough that i will earn my way out of it, but it is quite literally preventing me from starting any businesses right now, which is what i actually want to do.

this Shopify program would have been a lifesaver. we need way more Shopifys in the world.

<comment><USER13> I made the mistake too, going $128k in debt to pursue a unrelated master's degree at an Ivy only to end up pursuing software engineering.

Are your loans from the government? If so, you can likely qualify for the Pay- as-you-earn program where your payments are capped at 10% of your disposable income, and debts are forgiven after 20 years (though you have to pay taxes on the amount forgiven I believe). Of course it still stings to see $1.3k/month get sucked out of your bank account to pay the interest on this student debt scam, just know that the pain is mostly psychological. I just choose not to think about it, because it's too depressing otherwise.

I honestly believe that student debt will be forgiven within 10-20 years. Candidates like Elizabeth Warren are already pledging to eliminate student loan debt. Once the younger generation is in power, they will likely kill this giant pyramid scheme and forgive all student loans. And no matter what happens in Congress, if all of us collectively strike on our student loan debt, then the government will have no choice but to fix this problem they created.

<comment><USER10> $128k for a master's degree? Surely it had to be an MBA or a business school degree (MFin etc) of some sort? Most other Master's programs are research- oriented and paid for with grants, stipends and TA work.

<comment><USER13> It was expensive because it was at an Ivy League school. Most masters students at Ivy League schools do not receive any form of financial aid. It's basically a money printing machine for the university, and I fell for it.

I could've gotten a M.S. for free at my state university, but I wanted the prestige. Dumbest decision ever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is cool. But very conflicting for me personally. Here I am, deciding whether to apply to the Mississippi Teacher's Corp, which would give me a free Master's degree while getting paid to teach. Probably like $35k per year. And then here is this program, which is very tempting to apply to, partly because of the salary. It should be the other way around. Teaching is so much more valuable than coding.

<comment><USER15> As a somewhat weak rule, compensation seems to be inversely proportional to social value.

<comment><USER16> Not to shill a book, but Bullshit Jobs goes into this... those 'jobs like teaching are FUN' therefore they don't get paid as much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Here is some history and background about why Shopify did this and the success they saw early on.

[https://engineering.shopify.com/blogs/engineering/dev- degree...](https://engineering.shopify.com/blogs/engineering/dev-degree-a-big- bet-on-software-education)

Disclosure: recent hire at Shopify, not through this program. Just learned about it, actually today from HN. After mentioning it to my team, was pointed to this link and thought I'd share it here.

</comment><comment><USER18> Kudos to Shopify! You are leading the way!

I offhand mentioned a previous program they ran (letting people out of the field get an internship) to someone I knew, and it made a huge difference. Creating/sustaining jobs/incomes in this way is actually very cool in my books.

</comment><comment><USER19> As someone who went the bootcamp route, got a job, and absolutely would love a structured CS education that would expand my skills and experience beyond my day to day coding I do now this is very tempting.

The site isn't very specific about location, are there location requirements?

<comment><USER20> There are two universities involved: Carleton (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada) and York (Toronto, Ontario, Canada).

You must apply and qualify for the university degree, in addition to being selected by shoppify themselves. If I remember correctly when I asked about it, the University also had some say in the selection process.

When I looked into it, the number of accepted was quite low (I believe less than 15 per year), which to me indicates they are quite selective.

The people I met were exceptionally friendly, and genuine. It seems like a really excellent place to work, at least from the outside.

<comment><USER21> Shopify's HQ is in Ottawa, hence Carleton University.

York is in suburban Toronto.

Those schools are not quite in the same league as Toronto or Waterloo, but they're adequate.

<comment><USER9> The Lassonde on School of Engineering at York University started eight years ago. Within the last 8 years The Faculty has made major growth and acquired world-class faculty. The school is more than adequate and was named as one of three schools worldwide to watch in a report by MIT. I suggest you look at the teaching methods of the school and you will see how it differs from traditional ciriculums.

In my personal opinion, the education received in many areas. Lassonde stronger than both the traditional education of University of Toronto and University of Waterloo. I think there are benefits to each school, but they are different benefits. I strongly feel as your statement about the school's not being in the same league are without an understanding of educational institutions in Canada for engineering and computer science.

Source: President of the Engineering Student Union @ Lassonde where I am involved in all parts fo faculty operations.

<comment><USER22> > the education received in many areas. Lassonde stronger than both the > traditional education of University of Toronto and University of Waterloo

How is it stronger? It is a bit misleading to label UofT and Waterloo as "traditional" when both provide extensive coop programs and highly relevant courses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Says $160,000 salary. I'm guessing that's total over the 4 years, so $40k CAD per year. Still a great deal.

<comment><USER24> It says salary, tuition & vacation. So I wouldn't be surprised if that's a $160k estimation for the whole thing for the 4 years! But yeah, either way, better than $60k/y in tuition you end up owing!

<comment><USER25> Tuition in Canada is around $10k-20k/year depending on school and status.

<comment><USER26> Sounds a bit high. From a brief search (computer science bsc tuition, CAD, domestic (non-quebec) student): $6500 UBC, $11000 (McGill), $12500 (UofT), $15500 (Waterloo)

<comment><USER27> $10k tuition at York U, for the CS degree mentioned in the link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Wait how do they make money out of this. They're paying salary to people that can't yet code?

I've seen companies strugle to make money with mid level devs.

<comment><USER29> When you're the first large provider of tech apprenticeships, you want apprentices to stick around after graduation. The problem is that Shopify generally can't force employees to stay (companies hate suing over breach of contract for education subsidies). One work around is to pay a low salary during the training period. That's exactly what Shopify is doing (160K over 4 years = 40K per year).

This could be a cheap way of boosting Shopify's workforce and reputation. Tech companies have high revenue per employee. If Big Tech follows suit with other apprenticeships, Shopify could be known as the company that made white collar apprenticeships a thing in the U.S. and Canada. The apprentice program would become less expensive for Shopify over time as it captures apprentices from other companies.

<comment><USER28> I need to move to the states if 40k is a low salary for a junior over there. I started on less than that.

<comment><USER30> I'd say 40k is a bit low for a junior with a degree and the states does pay some of the highest salaries for developers, so not wrong

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Would be nice for (a) company/ies to do the same and allow for remote work while partnering with online program(s) (a la udemey & co or even some Harvard online). That way, it would let people all over the world access it and pool some really dope talent for the company(ies)! The students would be thrilled for the free or subsidized education while having some real world practice from real world companies. I remember hating how dumb some of the projects were in school and how going out of your way to make the project really awesome didn't really earn you much.

<comment><USER31> Remote work can be difficult for experienced engineers. I imagine it would be a huge burden for new engineers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> This looks really neat. I wish I had the foresight years ago to join something like this or even do a straight cs track to a large company.

My path has been less linear. Finished college with an accounting degree then worked at two fortune 500 consulting companies. I spent my nights and weekends doing web development work on the side (even did a failed startup with a buddy). A full-time opportunity opened up from one of these gigs and I've been there since. Now I run all their applications, websites, IT, and digital advertising.

Whenever I see programs like this pop up I'm always intrigued to supplement professional work with an academic mark in the hat as I know things could wind-down here and will be on a job search leaving me nervous as a 30 y/o developer whose has been working at small businesses (and not anything like FAANG). This is why I'll still pick up freelance work from time to time.

For sanity about 2 years back, I did apply and went through a series of interviews and tests for a remote software engineering position at a hot bay area company. It came down between me and one other guy. They conducted additional interviews because it was quite close. I ended up getting beat out, the other guy had a few years on me.

</comment><comment><USER33> We dont have accreditation from universities, but this is the direction we are going with the RedCarpet ROCKS program .

[https://www.redcarpetup.com/rocks](https://www.redcarpetup.com/rocks)

we do active placement here (unless we hire them). We have an above 90% placement rate here.

<comment><USER34> Interested. Final year I.T. engineering student from university of Mumbai.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> At my university there are a number of math requirements for the CS degree. A couple calculus courses, a couple linear algebra courses and a discrete math course. Each of them is the foundation for other CS courses, such as discrete math is for analysis of algorithms. Is this the case with these newer schools / approaches to becoming a software engineer? I for one really appreciate the math, but is it appreciated in industry? Curious to know.

</comment><comment><USER36> Does having a degree matter for majority of developer roles? I've gone down the apprenticeship route (UK) and went into web development. Getting a degree would be very unlikely to affect my chances of getting a job (should I move away from freelancing), or a higher salary, not everywhere, but probably 9/10 places.

Keen to hear other experiences and opinions

<comment><USER37> Web dev is different from others, but I think that it's not a huge help. Or at least, a comp sci degree isn't going to help too much. Web dev is more about presenting content than about "serious comp sci stuff". A comp sci degree is useful if you need to work a job where you have to remember which sub-type of trie is best for such and such data.

That said, you can learn just fine without a degree. Much of what I learned, especially the stuff that most developers use, was before college. The biggest barrier is that many employers consider college a test of "not being a fruit loop", but if you've got work experience, that should help overcome the barrier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> What are "mature students"?

<comment><USER39> [https://admissions.carleton.ca/applicant-type/mature- applica...](https://admissions.carleton.ca/applicant-type/mature-applicants/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> any opportunity like these for someone looking to move in australia?

</comment><comment><USER41> Great idea, it's a shame that they had to add this 50/50 nonsense. I know a lot of guy that would kill for that opportunity.

<comment><USER42> And I know a lot of women who have been successful graduates of the program, what's your point?

<comment><USER43> I dont understand these split of opportunity based on something(race/sex etc). Its more PR move than anything

If people truly want equality, it shouldnt even be a factor. No prejudice. Just treat all as of us one thing, human being.

<comment><USER42> If everyone starts from the same place it's fine to say "give everyone equal opportunity". If you really want to have equal opportunity given the historical and social background you have to acknowledge that everyone doesn't start from the same place.

<comment><USER41> And how exactly does it translate to gender? If anything, I would argue that most women have much better background. Not that it matters anyway. If an immigrant from 3rd world country can come to US at age 30 and be better than the competition, then you pretty much have no excuse if you were born here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> > get a free CS degree

Why? Learn stuff thats out of date from some one who has never don it. Even without the debt academia is pointless, just learn to learn.

<comment> a-priori " _because the parents want it. I 'm not joking, that's the actual reason._"

[https://twitter.com/tobi/status/1216800493684580356](https://twitter.com/tobi/status/1216800493684580356)</comment></comment>


Look Ma, no fingers: Tilt-scrolling should be built into the iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://www.thinksketchdesign.com/2010/02/08/design/tech/look-ma-no-fingers-tilt-scrolling-should-be-built-into-the-iphone

<comment><USER3> That design has a couple of problems. Most of them involve preventing accidental scrolling while allowing intentional scrolling.

Walking can cause accidental scrolling. Have you ever tried to hold a pan of water while walking? It sloshes forward and backward because humans don't walk at a constant speed. Every step is deceleration followed by acceleration. Any vehicle changing speed can cause accidental scrolling. A car accelerating or braking, a bus making stops, a subway. Fine-tuning the code to detect when to scroll would be a nightmare. If you make it less sensitive, users will complain that they have to tilt the phone too far to scroll at a decent speed. If you make it more sensitive, users will complain that it scrolls when they're just holding it.

It's not as intuitive as touch scrolling. Tilt scrolling requires "zeroing" the phone and being very careful with how you orient it. Touch scrolling is simple: text on the screen moves with your finger. With touch scrolling you can flick your finger across the screen to start scrolling far/fast, then touch the screen to immediately stop scrolling. You could copy this behavior by allowing touch and tilt scrolling, but then it gets even less intuitive.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, but you wouldn't have to use tilt scrolling in those conditions. Tilt- scrolling would be disabled by default. When the conditions were appropriate, you could opt to enable it simply by holding your finger on the screen for two seconds. (Touch scrolling would always be enabled.) Maybe a quick tap on the screen might turn off tilt-scrolling so that if your conditions changed, you could disable it before you lost your place.

If you were in a train that was accelerating, you could choose not to use the feature, or you could just use it while the ride was smooth and quickly switch to touch-only mode when necessary. For slight accelerations, you could also adjust for your environment's movement intuitively much like you naturally tilt a cup of coffee slightly as you move.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think tilt-scrolling would be quite unusable, albeit a nice optional feature - would be nice to play with it to see if it really works. There is definitely a problem with scrolling on the iPhone when it comes to long pages - <USER2> scrolling to the bottom of a page pracically impossible in some scenarios. There is this bias towards scrolling to the top, but not the bottom embedded into iPhone's design. That's why I made the End Of Page app for Safari on the iPhone - it lets you scroll to the bottom of very long pages without having to flick forever. It is free - I am releasing it in the hope that others find it useful. I should be on the App Store on Friday, provided all goes well with the approval process.</comment>


The news business is probably holding "a one-way ticket to Bangalore." - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/opinion/30dowd.html?_r=1&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

<comment><USER2> While I certainly understand the interest in outsourcing journalism, I'd much rather see newspapers do things like <http://www.mattwaite.com> has been doing over at the St. Petersburg times. Matt was the journalist/programmer that created <http://www.politifact.com> (the first website to win a Pulitzer). I think he's a huge unsung hero in the journalism world. I met him at DjangoCon 2008, and I've been mentally referring back to that conversation ever since.

Here's other links to his work: <http://mugshots.tampabay.com/> <http://hometeam.tampabay.com/> <http://watch.tampabay.com/homes/>

Journalists have a lot of training at tracking down public data sources, be it local home sales, sports scores or crime statistics. Those data sources things are just crying out for web applications. Matt's taken that idea and run with it. I hope other newspapers follow his lead, rather than simply outsourcing all their local coverage to Mumbai.

</comment><comment><USER3> Understatement of the decade: "it's going to get to the point where saving the industry may require some people losing their jobs"

<comment><USER4> I gave a lightning talk at the Great Lakes Software Excellence Conference <http://www.glsec.org/> with the premise that in-house, outsourcing, and off- shoring development can be modeled in systems engineering terms of bandwidth and latency. I posted the talk on my blog <http://jerryjousting.blogspot.com/>.

My conclusion from observing over the years is that companies with failed business models go offshore to die. Not all businesses that go off-shore die, but the ones that have business models that require close interaction with their suppliers and customers, that require quick reaction, or that require unique (domain) knowledge won't be successful with a move off-shore. The businesses that survive, even thrive, off-shore are ones that are or can become commodity suppliers (e.g. low bandwidth is sufficient for control and they can tolerate high latency on their product).

Sometimes the business model can be changed to adapt but a business is too ossified to adapt. Sometimes the whole business is no longer viable and the end is inevitable. Either way, historically, trying to maintain a failed business model simply by cutting labor costs fails.

Local news is not something you can off-shore successfully. It requires high bandwidth, local knowledge, and low latency. From the article: "Macpherson admits you can lose something in the translation — the Pasadena City Council Webcast that the Indian reporters now watch once missed two African-American lawmakers walking out in protest — but says the question is, how significant is it?" Ummm... like, _everything?_

<comment><USER5> >My conclusion from observing over the years is that companies with failed business models go offshore to die.

I'm consulting for a Fortune 500 that has used a particular 3rd party system for a significant business function for the past decade. Since the vendor seems incapable of debugging its own system, I ended up reverse engineering parts of it to identify the bug. Then, a call was scheduled between me, the Fortune 500's application support folks, and the vendor's application support folks. The vendor's customer service supervisor and I were the only two people on the call who were not located in India.

An analysis of the application's architecture is a data point in support of your claim. The oldest pieces of the application seem to have some thought behind them although the implementation is significantly outdated. However, the vendor's off-shored web-ification of the application is a cut & paste spaghetti disaster (as easily observed in nearly 4K JSPs, each with one-off authentication code). This company was recently sold to another software vendor that seems to collect has-been cash cows, so it's clearly a couple steps from the graveyard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So wrong I barely know where to start.

Why are drugs expensive when manufacturing them is cheap? Because discovering them is expensive. Why are games and movies expensive when burning a DVD is cheap? Because producing them is expensive. Why is news expensive when you can just publish it on the web? Because gathering interesting news is expensive and that's not changing anytime soon. People don't read a broadsheet to find out what's playing at their local cinema. They read stuff written by people who've been working on the story for 6 months, or 30 years building their list of contacts and their knowledge of a field.

The Times and the Encyclopedia Britannica, or some guy's blog and Wikipedia, world's gotta choose.

<comment><USER7> Some guy's blog and Wikipedia have been more accurate and interesting than news outlets for years now.

Most news outlets are just mills for regurgitating press releases wired over AP and Reuters. There's little actual reporting going on. It's much cheaper to run a paper this way -- fewer people working on the content itself allows you to print lots of paper with ads on it. Much of it is automated.

It's not like this is either some conspiracy or something unique to news. It's cheaper to run a restaurant by getting more of your stuff from Sysco. It's cheaper to build car lineups by basing more of them off of the same model and rebranding them. It's cheaper to print papers with ad space on them by automating the news portions as much as possible.

There's little reporting or fact checking going on. Only a few of the better papers aren't just regurgitation machines at this point, and even then, you're less likely to find hard-line reporting than years ago.

<comment><USER8> This is why I feel so little sympathy for the newspaper industry's problems.

If every paper started charging for access to their website tomorrow, the only ones worth bothering with would be AP/Reuters, NYT, WaPo, the Economist, and WSJ. A handful of papers produce 90% of the worthwhile, original content. The _hundreds_ of other papers published today add little to nothing of their own.

<comment><USER9> Well, I'm starting to lose respect for The Economist. There were few articles from area that I'm involved in and the articles were just one sides' arguments, without contacting the other side. The article author just met with someone in nice restaurant, listened to them and then run with the info. There was no effort for digging deeper, it is cheaper after all and fills pages too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Perhaps we can expect more of this in the future:

        "We didn't know the Onion was not a real news site."

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8237558.stm>

<comment><USER8> My first reaction on reading this article was wondering whether _it_ came from The Onion...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This has been tried with tech support. A lot of companies that did this have since moved call centres back to North America. Why? Because the customers revolted.

So the only thing this will achieve is to speed the death of the newspaper. Instead of differentiating themselves from all the spamblogs out there they seek to join them. They seem to not understand that the only purpose of those is to game Google rankings, which don't exist on paper.

</comment><comment><USER12> The likelihood of news jobs going overseas aside, I would enjoy a more global flavor to news in the United States. I often find the BBC's take on current events illuminating, and I'd be interested in quality coverage from other parts of the globe.</comment>


Show HN: Tinder, but for movies - <AUTHOR> http://focuslist.co/popcorn/en.html <comment><USER2> Doesn't need to be an app. A mobile web app would be fine.

</comment><comment><USER3> How did you manage to get the movie posters?

</comment><comment><USER4> Is there some AI or always random?</comment>


Assange in 2011: "They have automated the process." - why-el http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2011/05/02/wikileaks-founder-facebook-is-the-most-appalling-spy-machine-that-has-ever-been-invented/ <comment><AUTHOR> The problem with Facebook is not that government has access to it -- at least, that's not a problem _unique_ to FB (Gmail, as one commenter says, is probably worse in terms of raw access to personal details). The problem with Facebook is that it is personal details specifically organized into a dossier-like format. It's one thing for the NSA, for instance, to be able to tap into the hose of undifferentiated data streaming through the network. It's quite another thing for that data to be specifically organized for the purposes of quickly discovering key information about somebody, such as their social network, their political interests, their latest photos, etc. all indexed and searchable. Think about the cost of taking Gmail's data and turning it into something useable by intelligence organizations -- work that FB "empowers" us to do for them!

What we need are tools that allow us to connect in ways that are difficult not only to detect but also to make sense of (not necessarily encryption, but an ad-hoc format that can't be easily parsed and aggregated). We need the ability to use the network for our own particular, peculiar interests rather than having to fit our interactions into some other authority's template for _their_ interests. The idea that social networking never occurred before Friendster, FB, MySpace is ridiculous -- it just happened more informally before.

I'd like to see a return to this informal mode of using TCP/IP, where the internet itself is the social network rather than merely a transport layer for some centralized system. This may make it harder for everyday people to benefit, but it also means they learn how to drive before they use the roads. Social networking's hyped-up promise has always been to passively connect people, but the promise of the internet has always been to allow people to actively connect (or not connect). Once we have a broader suite of tools for this latter purpose, we'll see people reject centralized dossier services like FB.

<comment><USER2> > What we need are tools that allow us to connect in ways that are difficult > not only to detect but also to make sense of (not necessarily encryption, > but an ad-hoc format that can't be easily parsed and aggregated).

Which would also make it much more difficult to use and less useful. We've organized our info this way because we like it and it makes sense, it's no surprise that it's useful to the government as well. In other words, I think the value to us and the value to them are very tightly coupled.

And the thing is, outside of the hardcore techie bubble, most people don't care. So what if the government can see their friends and pictures, even track them to some degree? Why _should_ they care? They're not going to migrate to some convoluted unstructured system just for the abstract and esoteric benefit of privacy.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Which would also make it much more difficult to use and less useful.

Maybe. As somebody who's worked in content management system design for a great deal of his career, I'm not at all convinced that the ongoing enclosure of information into systems of formatting serves people. Instead, what you find is people jumping through hoops to fit their information into the format chosen by others. Paul Goodman critiqued the tyranny of format 50 years ago, and Douglas Rushkoff authored the natural extension of this critique in his seminal "Program or Be Programmed". The promise of the internet has to be more than giving people text boxes, or I give up. :)

> We've organized our info this way because we like it and it makes sense, > it's no surprise that it's useful to the government as well.

Really? The users of FB have decided that this is the way they'd like to organize their information? Surprising. I never recall in my use of FB being given the ability to structure the format as I and my friends see fit. I must have missed something.

In all seriousness, I think we need to look very carefully at this coupling of value you speak of. There are almost certainly areas where the format chosen by an authority (a corporation, a government, any institution really) is that that free individuals would choose. But not every area, and as the information gets more personal, the format becomes more restrictive. I'm not sure where the line between sharing on one's own terms and another's terms gets crossed, but any network that can aggregate detailed information about BILLIONS of people has certainly crossed it. The question is simply whether or not we should be content with this situation.

<comment><USER2> > The users of FB have decided that this is the way they'd like to organize > their information?

In aggregate, by choosing to use Facebook, and by providing feedback and usage data that shapes how it changes. I realize that there is a certain stickyness and network effect at play, but at some level we have chosen this platform and format, and many (most?) are content with it.

I can't really wrap my head around a useful replacement that has no enforced formatting/is difficult to aggregate and parse. If you have any more concrete ideas or examples I would be interested.

<comment><AUTHOR> >> The users of FB have decided that this is the way they'd like to organize their information?

>In aggregate, by choosing to use Facebook, and by providing feedback and usage data that shapes how it changes.

I simply draw a different conclusion from that than you do. At some level we have chosen it, yes. I'm not denying that, but instead trying to figure out whether that level is necessary. I appreciate the pushback!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've been following these discussions the past couple of days on HN, and there are a few calm minds who are very knowledgeable of the law, who's comments have been enlightening and reassuring ('rayiner and others).

But we now live in a completely online world, where nearly all communication and files are conveyed and hosted by third parties, and soon it will take several minutes for even a geek to mentally count up the number of internet- connected computers in their house.

I am comforted by the idea that Jack Bauer and Chloe have timely access to information to stop the bad guys, and that US secret agencies have little motivation or bandwidth to use this information for anything but national security threats (and hopefully kidnapping and such). Bad actors in these agencies can obviously do a lot of harm to individuals, but those cases will probably be personal and few, widespread malicious use of this data by agency employees would be easier to uncover.

What I find most troubling is the ease with which the government can view my information and how I've steadily made it easier for them over the past five years by getting that iPhone, using Dropbox and Gmail. But, my life has seemed safe, prosperous and peaceful over that time and these services I use have had a profound impact on the efficiency and convenience with which I perform my daily routine.

<comment><USER4> "Those who do not move, do not notice their chains." \- Rosa Luxemburg

Of course you don't care about privacy, why should you? You're just a peaceful flock member. never acting against the power of the status quo. But look around and see what happens to the people that actually do confront power and you'll see why privacy is important.

<comment><USER3> Can you give me an example?

<comment><USER4> [http://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty-free- speech/...](http://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty-free-speech/feds- settle-lawsuit-bradley-manning-supporter-over-border) [http://www.salon.com/2012/04/08/u_s_filmmaker_repeatedly_det...](http://www.salon.com/2012/04/08/u_s_filmmaker_repeatedly_detained_at_border&#x2F); Entire wikileaks saga. Anonymous.

Really, you just have to pay attention.

<comment><USER3> The first link was about a lawyer, who represented the soldier who stole massive amounts of classified material while stationed in a war zone, being detained and searched at the border. The second was about a film maker returning to the country after traveling to a war zone and being detained and searched.

In both cases their laptops/cameras/etc were searched and confiscated for a time. Neither person seems to have been detained overnight.

This is just the government being thorough. This is not disturbing to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would now consider paying for services that offer real private email, social networking and file sharing / cloud backups, where none of those services were controlled by an US controlled entity and where the NSA couldn't snoop around in my private life. However boring my private life is, it is still mine.

I wonder if anyone else would part with cold hard cash though, or is it just me? There maybe a niche there.

<comment><USER6> Paying with your credit card? That's being tracked. Your back account transactions are being indexed and collated.

They're probably in all of our computers already. I've been operating a windows7 honeypot as my "main" computer for several years, generating what appears to be legit "personal" traffic. You wouldn't believe the shit I've found, and it doesn't appear to be your garden variety cyber criminals or foreign state actors. And I'm not even that smart.

<comment><USER7> Could you elaborate a bit on what you found on your honeypot?

<comment><USER6> It appears that the honeypot has been compromised in both a domestic botnet running in system memory by "authorities" local to the US, and also that there are background processes in Windows that are inspecting the filesystem for binaries matching certain signatures no matter how the user configures the system, even "stubbing out" the visible processes that would make sense, like their anti-malware and indexing services. Basically a Windows machine is owned from the get go.

Unfortunately this is not exactly my particular area of expertise, so for me it's like glimpsing a shadow through smoke and a moving window, mostly an impression but something that has become more and more sophisticated despite my attempts to prevent it via traditional and modern methods of forensics, and even weird things like audible and inaudible platter noise when there shouldn't be heavy (this is the key for me) disk io.

<comment><USER8> Those are pretty explosive claims.

a) How are you identifying the processes? 2) How are you determining that they are inspecting the filesystem?

<comment><USER6> I certainly understand the gravity of what I'm alleging, and I wish I had formal training in this stuff so I could publish my observations with some sort of rigour. I will say my methods are pretty crude and consist of:

Process of elimination as far as the processes are concerned. Basically I have been paring back the processes that are visible to me in memory until it should be a bare minimum for a functional Windows kernel in memory, and stubbing out the non-essential processes I find with empty "stubs" so that the hooks are still there but non-functional. Then observing disk io and memory usage, and repeating. Not very scientific, but again, I'm an amateur.

The stuff about disk platter noise is simply recording the audible and inaudible frequencies generated from the platter (I haven't upgraded to a ssd for the system disk yet), and then running regressions on the wave forms to detect anomalies via the noise generated by the platter and the reading head interacting. I was interested in looking into the inaudible frequencies because it seemed like a good way to cloak disk io from the average user.

As far as the botnet stuff, I've done some MITM packet analysis and some simple stuff like tracerts and observing changes in routing. Right now the box is routing all name service through what appears to be another compromised box in the US state of Georgia, though I'm hesitant to do much network topology due to port-scanning being considered the same as cracking.

This is all just a hobby, and I'm sure some of the stuff I've mentioned about is either very crazy sounding or perhaps already known to people more knowledgeable than me. I grew up when pcs were still a weird hobby for society, and so this sort of stuff seems like things we should be able to do without fearing repercussions.

Also, I only posted this to give context to what I had posted before, so take it for whatever you want to. I'm interested in non-violent solutions to improving society and I don't want to jeopardize that.

<comment><USER9> How do you tie these things back to a domestic botnet controlled by "authorities" local to the US?

<comment><USER6> Just looking at the disk activity of reads, inspecting the memory dumps from these periods, and picking out what I can via a hex editor as far as what the "inspection" appears to be looking for via checksums derived from file blocks, which appear to be tied to images and videos. I'm assuming that this is domestic and not foreign, which I certainly could be wrong about. I'm also assuming they're looking for kiddie fiddlers, which I doubt someone like China would be all that interested in, but maybe the PRC is for blackmail purposes.

A lot of this stuff is sort of ephemeral and I don't have any credentials to really convince anyone. That's why I would post this, maybe someone else knows more than me. Like I said, take this as anecdotal and perhaps incorrect... You'll notice a lot of assumptions by me.

<comment><USER9> Well, the behaviour you are describing just sounds like Microsoft's anti-virus software - and they have a datacenter in Georgia - something to consider.

If you are genuinely concerned I think it is pretty simple to contact real professionals with whatever data you have.

<comment><USER6> I don't know, the name service resolution terminated in a server with an open smtp relay, which might be what you're talking about but sounds strange. Plus, it's name service resolution for _all_ outbound traffic. Thanks for the tip though. Like I said, I'm just a computer hobbyist

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm curious if my friends, family, and co-workers that rolled their eyes at me or laughed at me when I explained why I deleted my facebook account years ago even remember the conversation, or what their response was, when they read the latest revelations about the government having access to their databases.

<comment> k-mcgrady Deleting your Facebook account isn't a solution to this problem. Gmail may contain even more personal information. Dropbox contains your files and is essentially giving them access to documents you would have stored offline 10 years ago. The problem is that none of these services are safe anymore and we need specific legislation detailing what the government can and can't do with the information we have stored on them.

The bigger problem for me is that as my data is being stored in the US by US companies and my countries laws don't apply - and the safeguards provided by the US constitution also don't apply. The NSA/FBI can do whatever they want with my data and have said as much[1]:

"He said reports about Prism contained "numerous inaccuracies". While admitting the government collected communications from internet firms, he said the policy only targets "non-US persons"."

I think we might start to see companies having data centres in multiple countries and allowing you to store your data in the one you choose or the one that follows your countries laws. Otherwise there will be an exodus of users from US internet companies.

[1][http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us- canada-22809541](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22809541)

<comment><USER11> The best approach is to keep profiles/accounts on all of those services and use them periodically to create a "clean" trail. Meanwhile, if you need any actual privacy, find alternate/private channels.

Considering the enormous amount of data being collected and the relative ease of setting up a clean trail, this kind of spying makes it even easier for low/moderate-suspicion individuals to achieve secure communications.

For high suspicion individuals, this kind of surveillance makes it easy to create disinformation that appears to be real intel.

The workflow required to leave a realistic "clean" trail while simultaneously engaging in secure communication could be designed into a purpose-built linux distro.

<comment><USER12> _purpose-built linux distro_

That seems to be the intent of Tails [1]; see also [2].

[1] [https://tails.boum.org](https://tails.boum.org)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5838140](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5838140)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Prescient.

Will these NSA spy revelations hurt US internet companies? If I am German or Russian or Brazilian... do I really want to go out of my way to feed the U.S. intelligence beast?

<comment><USER14> First: as such you probably already do feed them

Second: that kind of thinking could be a nice way to "motivate" the creation of alternative products out side of the us of a.

Third: but how realistic are such endeavors in today's world?

<comment><USER15> On the other hand, there are relatively few governments worldwide that I would trust more (or distrust less, I guess) than that of the US to abuse this kind of information. The US isn't perfect, but a lot of places out there are worse.

<comment><USER16> ``Being stabbed by a handsome gentleman is awful, but being stabbed by an ugly man is worse, so thank God I'm only being stabbed by a handsome gentleman!''

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "CIA calls Facebook 'Reason We Invented The Internet'" [1], gotta love The Onion :)

[1] [http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program- dramatic...](http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatically- cut-agencys-cos,19753&#x2F);

</comment><comment><USER18> Government spying on my Facebook account is bothersome in regards to privacy limits of power but it is Facebook and anything I put there I should expect to be public at some point.

We need more public spying on the government....

<comment><USER19> > _We need more public spying on the government..._

Are there public databases that collect information on officers/ agents?

If not what kinds of information would be valuable (to the public) to collect/ what kind of processes would be good to use(crowd-sourcing, web-scraping, .gov apis, etc)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Lets be honest. Most people scream about privacy violations but in turn are more than willing, hell you cannot shut them up, to tell you all about themselves, their stuff, their friends, and such.

Even with legislation do you expect it not to be easy for any agency to just gather the information? At worst we will get an "Online Users Bill of Rights" which will only codify their rights to our privacy.

</comment><comment><USER21> I think the real question we should be asking ourselves is "What sort of society are we trying to protect?"

</comment><comment><USER22> Assange is an exemplary case of how secret services operate. Containment plan is generally to discredit an inconvenient person via a character attack, which directs attention to a single person (and boy do the crowd loves gossip and celebrities), overshadowing whatever sensitive information there is to disclose. Make this person an unreliable source before they have anything to say.

He's been labeled a rapist, a crackpot, or even an agent of the evil, with little regard to atrocities exposed by the Wikileaks.

Yet like our beloved RMS, if you read the early texts, it is clear that they had seen it coming way before us - _sane_ , _normal_ people.

</comment><comment><USER23> I wonder whether the time has come to build some better tools for protecting privacy. Looking at the common implementations of encryption the publicly available free stuff has some fairly awful interfaces. It's especially a mess if you're looking at securely communicating with a website - I can't think of a single browser that supports anything like a decent standard of encryption for that.

</comment><comment><USER24> \+ We haven't committed any crime — then there's nothing to worry! And so spying on certain accounts is fine, if they need to investigate, track and analyze data for Intelligence.

\+ I'm perfectly fine if they take my data — till its serving in the good interests of my family and people's safety.

\+ _It should only be_ in the good interests of our system and society.

\+ But such credible data, should not be misused by the govt bodies or elected representatives!

<comment><USER25> Who is to decide what is in the "interest" of your family and people's safety? This is subjective and cedes power to whoever is in control of the surveillance mechanism. The surveyor may have motives that are not as benevolent as you would like to think.

<comment><USER26> Or worse still, what if the definition of what is "safe" changes, following some sort of incident (9/11?)

Once they have amassed all this data about you they can mine it to their heart's content and use it to make predictions - those books you read before the "incident" that seemed innocent now get you flagged as a potential terrorist.</comment></comment></comment>


JavaScript CPU cache snooper can use L3-cache for keylogger and mouse events - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/21/cache_creeps_can_spy_on_web_histories_for_80_of_net_users/

<comment><USER2> There's so much wrong with running semi-arbitrary obfuscated code from random other people. And yet so many people do it every day without a second thought.</comment>


Ask HN: Outsourcing mobile app development, how and how much? - <AUTHOR>

Suppose I had some ideas for a few simple mobile games, for example a card game and/or simple 2D scroller, a budget of about $5000, and I only have enough time in my schedule to source developers, sketch concepts, approve the work, and source media.
Do I have realistic chance of creating a simple mobile game for iOS (and possibly Android) with these constraints? If not then what am I missing?
For those who have done this, which outsourcing forums do you recommend for this type of work? <comment><USER2> For a game it really depends on scope of the game as the money for assets can rack up quickly.

What is really important is if you don't mind outsourcing outside of your comfort zone, to places with lower cost of living (Portugal here, for example). For example, for code development only I charge around 50 USD/hr now, and I'm going from experience here, small games can take from about 60-80 billable hours to make of course, depending on scope bringing the value to about $4000.

Send me an email if you are interested in discussing it further.</comment>


Show HN: Codeiac.com – Your humble, syntax-aware online editor - <AUTHOR> http://Codeiac.com <comment><AUTHOR> I just launched [http://codeiac.com](http://codeiac.com) \- it's essentially an online code editor with syntax highlighting.

It's nothing fancy, but quite handy if you just need to quickly see the syntax of any php/html/js/css piece of code (even mixed).

I'm sure there are tons of similar sites but I haven't ever seen one that I liked - I hope you like this one.

Suggestions are more than welcome!

</comment><comment><USER2> This is almost exclusively CodeMirror?

[https://codemirror.net](https://codemirror.net)

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course it is - just like codepen.io, Adobe Brackets and tons of other online and offline similar tools. Codemirror is usually the best choice when you want to do anything related to syntax highlighting.

The only difference of codeiac compared to other implementations is that it's dead simple, fullscreen and has the only functionality required by the majority of frontend developers. Essentially i made this for me - but I think it might be handy for others too.</comment></comment>


Unlocking Google's Lotus Notes opportunity - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/saas/unlocking-googles-lotus-notes-opportunity/1119

<comment><USER2> It's not just the size of the Notes userbase which makes it attractive... It's the fact that every user of Notes hates it with a passion. A market ripe for picking I'd say!</comment>


Cryptocurrencies Are Selling Off - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-08/bitcoin-resumes-drop-as-asian-regulation-demand-concerns-linger <comment><USER2> Err, Ethereum hit an all-time high yesterday (~$1250) and at time of writing is up for the day: [https://www.coingecko.com/en/price_charts/ethereum/usd](https://www.coingecko.com/en/price_charts/ethereum/usd)

Don't get me wrong, I'm also expecting the bubble to burst, but I see no signs that this particular decline is "the big one".

<comment><USER3> Just goes to show how volatility of these coins. What I find surprising, something which no one is talking about especially with the Mark Zuckerberg comparison and all that, is the drop in Ripple. As I write this, coinmarketcap says a huge 25% drop.

<comment><USER4> Ripple price compared to Bitcoin/Ethereum was and still is ridiculous. My harebrained theory is that the Arrington $100M crypto fund requiring deposit in XRP drove the price way up.

I thought I had a sense of this market until Ripple...the network is good but XRP isn't much needed to use it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not sure what Bloomberg is looking at but most mainstream sites are writing articles with information in it that is just wrong or FUD like.

Ethereum as an example, is near an all time high as PoS nears. Many other tokens with unique use cases like NEO and XMR are at all time highs as well.

<comment><USER6> What is PoS?

<comment><USER7> Depends greatly on context, but here it refers to Proof of Stake.

[https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_Stake](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_Stake)

<comment><USER4> In relation to price, PoS removes the energy expenditure required to mine coins. Without constant selling pressure of miners selling to cover electricity costs, price may rise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > Coinmarketcap.com's decision to exclude Korean pricing data for coins helped > create the appearance of a large drop in prices, which some traders > attributed as playing a part in the selloff.

Any particular reason this price exclusion has happened?

<comment><USER2> Korea has tight exchange controls and it's very difficult to register on the local exchanges unless you're a local resident. This blog post has more detail:

[https://medium.com/cryptonight/investigating-the-great- korea...](https://medium.com/cryptonight/investigating-the-great-korean- bitcoin-arbitrage-opportunity-32e4e547a730)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Autoplays video with sound.

<comment><USER3> That is a staple on Bloomberg. Disabling scripts is the only way out.

<comment><USER9> Or Safari</comment></comment></comment>


Any collaboration tool that combines the functionality of Trello and Hipchat? - <AUTHOR>

online; open-source or not Simply im looking for a project management/productivity tool which has chat functionality. thanks <comment><USER2> <http://wunderkit.com> maybe.</comment>


Ask HN: How much equity is fair? - <AUTHOR> Hi, I'm a senior engineer with 8 year experience and a PhD. I'm considering joining a startup as one of the first 10 employees, how much equity will be a fair amount? <comment><USER2> That's asked sooo many times on HN. Here are a few threads to get you thinking:

How much equity should i ask for: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9516991](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9516991)

First employee, how much to ask for:[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18052992](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18052992)

How much equity to ask for: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11130492](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11130492)

How much equity is a good advisor worth: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1912588](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1912588)

How much equity do you give employees:[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=565045](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=565045)

How much equity should i ask for: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2635050](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2635050)

How much equity should i give my new- cofounder[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8668290](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8668290)

How much equity to offer first employee employee:[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=598509](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=598509)

How much equity should I ask for?[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3904759](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3904759)

That should do the trick. Happy hunting</comment>


HackingPot - 'graduation project' by Udacity CS101 student - <AUTHOR>

as a 'graduation project' for Udacity's Intro to CS (CS101) I made a search engine for hackers/makers (http://hackingpot.com).
By inputing components/ingredients you can find projects/recipes (right now only electronic projects from Make:Projects, but in the future there will be other sources). Anyway, I had little to no programming experience before this course. Udacity helped me realize this project. I know there are many ways to improve this application. Any input would be welcome (it is Open Source so you can check out the code in GitHub). <comment><USER2> Hmm

<http://hackingpot.com/search?q=ruby>

<comment><AUTHOR> currently only electronic projects are indexed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> <http://hackingpot.com></comment>


Why other Tech Talent is getting paid more than you - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@lanec/why-other-tech-talent-gets-paid-more-than-you-eac74808f3c8 <comment><USER2> Disguising a blog post as a native advertisement for your startup is not clever or "growth hacking."

<comment><USER3> I don't think they're trying to "disguise" anything. The article is informative, if they have a solution to present, use it if you agree, don't use it if you don't. They mention their company twice towards the bottom of the article, a place you won't get if you don't find the content interesting.

<comment><USER4> While the article is informative, it's also an ad for a recruiting agency, and the advice has to be interpreted in that light. Still, if this is the future of "native advertising", I like it.</comment></comment></comment>


Gerald Ratner's 'crap' comment haunts jewellery chain (1992) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/aug/22/gerald-ratner-jewellery-total-crap-1992-archive <comment><USER2> It's quite extraordinary that a company's boss would think it was a good idea to say the following during a public speech at a conference of the Institute of Directors:

"We also do cut-glass sherry decanters complete with six glasses on a silver- plated tray that your butler can serve you drinks on, all for £4.95. People say, "How can you sell this for such a low price?", I say, "because it's total crap."

But what is also interesting is that his chain was selling very cheap jewellery and that anyone sensible would indeed have understood and known that they were selling 'crap'. Nevertheless they were successful until the boss spilled the beans publicly. He probably thought he was just stating the obvious that everyone knew in a humorous way... Yet that had a dramatic effect on the business.

People may go buy crap but they don't want to be told that they do...

<comment><USER3> This is pre internet, when people still had an expectation of privacy. By all accounts it was a joke he had made many times before.

I find it interesting to compare with say Ryanair. Which in some ways has the same approach to brutal honesty, and a seemingly similarly abrasive boss. Ryanair seem to get away with it though, I suspect because we've become more aware of how the sausage is made.

<comment><USER2> > when people still had an expectation of privacy.

What expectation of privacy do you have during a public, filmed, speech?

<comment><USER3> There wasn't an expectation that it would have gone up on the internet, shared with millions, etc, etc, etc.

If I went to a wedding in the 90s I wouldn't have been surprised if it would have been filmed, I would have been surprised if that video had been widely shared. Today every man and his dog could potentially be filming and sharing on facebook.

In short, privacy isnt (or wasn't) a binary choice between being completely private and wide open to the public, and things tended to trend more to the private, relative to today.

<comment><USER2> Hmm, I don't agree with that.

It wasn't a random wedding. It was an important conference, professionally filmed, and with the press in attendance, and of course what he said was seized upon by the media as one could have foreseen.

I don't think he expected his speech to remain relatively confidential. I think he somehow thought what he said was not a big deal.

<comment><USER3> This comment is theoretically readable by billions of people, I'd be most surprised, even if I made the most outrageous comment, that anything more than a few down votes would occur.

No its not confidential, but its an after dinner speech. Such things generally don't make headlines, or even get reported on at all. You're right in that I don't think he thought it was a big deal, he had tailored the speed to a certain demographic, but it didn't stay 'private' within that demographic as he had expected.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Cool tool for editing graphs (algorithms) - <AUTHOR> https://csacademy.com/app/graph_editor/ <comment><USER2> Nice tool to build graphs. Except of creating edges between notes it also works on touch devices.

Great to have exports and png support as well. Bookmarked.

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome tool. Wish you could export the graph as an iFrame so you can embbed it in other websites!

</comment><comment><USER4> Awesome, but I wish it would support multiple edges and self loops.</comment>


Ask HN: Help me validate my startup idea - <AUTHOR>

A website to help SaaS owners to evaluate and adjust their performance over time. The SaaS owner provides monthly metrics (advertising costs&associated traffic, new trials, new subscriptions, lost subscriptions, ...) and in return key indicators are computed (cac, ltv, cogs...) and tips adapted to the situation are proposed. This would be free. A paying option would be an access to a simple api to automatically fill the metrics and generate a report each month).<p>Does it already exists ? Do you feel it could work ? <comment><USER2> Sounds like an awful lot of data entry at a time when primary process takes precedence. It might work if you're in a team where someone has a mission to watch the process. What might work is pushing it as a competition. Your target audience is full of competitive people, after all.

<comment><AUTHOR> Then I'll have to convince that collecting internally the data is a best practive (it is!) and that not doing it anyways is like night driving without lighting.

I'm afraid pushing it as a competition would fail. It would so easy to cheat.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Our launch is trending on Product Hunt – now what? - <AUTHOR> We launched our iOS Framework earlier this week (http://www.redbeard.io).<p>We're trending on the front page of Product Hunt. Wondering what we should do to help ensure we keep the momentum? <comment><USER2> Well, for one you could try to get on HN to keep the buzz moving. Oh, wait, I see what you did there.

<comment><AUTHOR> we're at no 2. no hope of getting any higher...we can't compete against an automated marijuana making machine no matter how good Redbeard is :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Short answer: Everything.

Longer answer: you keep building something people need. You spend 100% of your time either acquiring users, talking to users, or building what users need.

You set one metric for the company and work towards that. As an early company, that is usually users. Then it is revenue.

That's really all there is.

If being on product hunt gets you users, that's awesome. If not, it's a waste of time.

If being on HN gets you users or feedback from potential users, that's awesome. Otherwise, it is a waste of time. (I'm going to download this and see if I can spin something up for [https://romuluscrm.com](https://romuluscrm.com), so you got at least 1!)

1) Build something people want. 2) Get it into the hands of those people. 3) Charge them money in proportion to the value you're providing. ... 879412309) IPO

<comment><AUTHOR> awesome post, thanks for the detailed reply I'm still deciphering everything. Literally making notes in Evenote.

If you need anything at all, tech assistance etc. please feel free to email me: zahid [at] redbeard.io

I'll be using my twitter too from now on that's @zahid

<comment><USER3> Will do. I haven't written ObjC in years, but your site does a good job of getting me interested.

If you have questions about running a company, I'm chris [at] seneca.systems

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nothing you'll do now matters for the future of your product, not even your appearance on product hunt (which barely is read by your target audience anyway), so just continue with what you were doing before.

<comment><USER5> Take me for example. I downloaded your framework and will never look at it again.

<comment><AUTHOR> lol....how can I possibly convince you to use it :)

In all seriousness thanks for the comments. They're giving the sense that Product Hunt won't make us overnight millionaires and we've got a hard task ahead of us

<comment><USER6> Try content marketing? Blog some focused pieces on native mobile dev in general and what sucks, then show how your product makes everyone's lives better and saves the day.

Set a schedule and post, that's the way people will see your name from time to time, and after seeing it for 10 or 20 or 50 times, might want to try. Get on their radar.

See Auth0's blog [1], even though they sell one-click auth, they have a lot of neat content on front-end frameworks and so on.

[1]: [https://auth0.com/blog/](https://auth0.com/blog/)

<comment><AUTHOR> awesome, will really take this onboard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> congrats. But traffic from product hunt (et al) and news articles, etc is always temporary. So here in a bit it's going to die down, no matter what you do. You may or may NOT get users from it, and there's nothing you can do about that--a lot of times on these types of sites, people are just curious and move on to the next thing tomorrow.

Just remember that, and don't let it discourage you. Keep doing what you're doing and stick to your plan.

Also, product hunt, hn, news articles are not a substitute for a marketing plan. So if you haven't thought about how you're going to get users without them, it's a good time to start thinking about it. Traffic from PH, HN, news, etc should be thought of as a bonus--a nice thing to have.. your startup should not depend on it at all. (Edit: to expand on this.. traffic like PH is semi-random. While marketing is a process. You can't depend on semi-random events. But you can execute and refine a process.)

<comment><USER8> Hi rgbrenner. Co-founder of Redbeard here. I really appreciate and definitely agree with this comment. I have a great post saved from a few years ago by Alex of GrooveHQ which also mentions the same sentiment: [http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/96361/Getting- Crunched-...](http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/96361/Getting-Crunched- Mashed-Or-Beaten-Is-Not-A-Launch-Strategy.aspx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Since you are getting plenty of traffic - will getting more feedback help ? If so, can you make giving feedback easily accessible at home page ? So what should be a good question be ? eg:question we are better than say a competitor (fill the name?) because ?

If gaining more users is what you want - will adding a forkme at github help ?

If gaining more traction : add social buttons to spread the word about page ?

</comment><comment><USER10> I saw this couple of days ago and was wondering how flexible this framework is? Will you be providing source code?

<comment><USER8> The source code is not available as it's a compiled framework however our plan is to soon launch a Marketplace of high quality end to end apps (think clones of Twitter/Instagram/Tinder etc) to give developers a boost when starting their projects. It's also a great way for new developers to learn iOS development.

<comment><USER10> That's an interesting idea. I was running a dev shop few years ago and this would've been useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Continue working on your product.

<comment><AUTHOR> am coding as we speak...and I'm serious.

We're realising source code to one our apps as part of the marketing drive this one >

[https://appsto.re/gb/ZiUPdb.i](https://appsto.re/gb/ZiUPdb.i)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Capture as many email addresses as you can and start a list so that you can continue to reach out to those that showed initial interest as you build the business.

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently we show a popup for newsletter signup and to download the Redbeard framework you need to provide your name/email. Which we collect.

The download link is emailed out. Myself and co-founder debated the merits of this . He is of the mind, getting emails is important. I think getting people using the framework and lowering barriers to in order to do that is far more pressing. What would you suggest?

<comment><USER6> Capturing an email allows to build an ongoing connection. It's easier to sell if you have proven to be useful on the small scale (free articles & advice), than to expect people to buy something as fundamental as a UI framework right off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> You won't keep the momentum. Think of it as a burst of leads, similar to having a booth at a trade show.

<comment><AUTHOR> do you (or anyone) know how the tail off it. Is it pretty much dead after coming off the front page for example?

<comment><USER13> Typically yes, but prior products can make their way into lists, where they'll traffic down the road. As for when traffic will die down, honestly, I'd say within a day or 2, based on how people use PH.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Write a follow up blog post

<comment><AUTHOR> like a medium post detailing how we got on to Product Hunt?

<comment><USER7> which will be read by people hoping to get their product on PH... meaning they're even less likely to use your product.

Focus on your product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Stream about it on Facebook live and retain as many genuine users you pick up as possible.

Throwing up some surveys while you have enough traffic to make them feasible is a good idea, too.

(As others have pointed out, improving the product is still #1, but it doesn't look like you were looking for advice about that side of things in this post)</comment>


Reporting From the Web's Underbelly - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/17/technology/reporting-from-the-webs-underbelly.html?hpw&rref=technology&_r=0 <comment><USER2> > The source said that he had bought a large batch of stolen cards from an > underground site and that they all appeared to have been used at Target.

Interesting sidenote in the Target hack. First, something that you might not know: not one of these breaches (that is Target, Neiman Marcus, Michaels, etc.) was discovered by the actual affected companies - they were all discovered by bank and security officials in the underground markets.

Bank and infosec people worked out a while ago that rather than wait for breaches to be discovered, it'd be best to set yourself up on the underground markets in the guise of a purchaser - buy up cards, correlate purchase history and work out who has been hacked. It is this type of reconstruction that lead back to Target, Neiman Marcus, et al.

Target was discovered not too long after the hackers had ramped up their sniffing, and with the response from banks and computers it meant the overall 'score' wasn't that great. A hack that should have provided enough dumps for the entire underground for more than a year ended up lasting weeks.

So score one for the good guys.

The problem now is that the black hat groups have wizened up to this. A few things are happening.

First, there has been a bit of a purge of users in the forums. It is harder than ever to get into the private forums.

Second, cards are now being 'laundered'. You take dumps from different sources and combine them together, to the point where it would be difficult to find out where the cards were stolen from. Being from a particular source used to be a selling point for the traders, but now they are blurring a lot of that info out and combining different dumps and then slicing them for sale in other ways (usually IBAN, State and Expiry).

The public 'auto sites' that sold these dumps have all been taken down, after getting a lot of attention over the Target attack. Many complete novices sought out the underground sites after the Target breach reporting in the mainstream media, flooding the forums with newbie questions and requests in a mini eternal september.

It is possible that with the underground adapting in this way and the state of security still being so poor that we won't even find out about the next big breaches.

<comment><USER3> Is there a bright side to this, though? Doesn't this mean that the barrier to entry will increase for this kind of crime, and thus a smaller group of criminals will be able to perform it? Maybe that's small consolation, considering that only a handful need to do it to cause widespread havoc. Still. I hope this isn't _all_ bad.

<comment><USER2> You can now buy credit cards on some of the new underground markets that are replacing Silk Road.

Find the type of card you want, select how many you want ($5-20 each) and go through the checkout process, just like shopping on Amazon.

What happen is that there is now another tier of distribution - the bulk guys aren't selling directly to the public any more but there are people buying from them who _are_ , and they are making it easy.

The bright side is that with chip+pin the horizon for dumps is short, but that leaves CVV's (card not present carding, used in online fraud).

<comment><USER4> Although I almost don't want to know the answer here, how are people usually paying for these cards? Is it Bitcoin?

I know Liberty Reserve was alleged to be popular among carders before. So has it all shifted to Bitcoin now that Liberty Reserve has been shut down?

<comment><USER2> It is bitcoin almost everywhere in the underground now. It used to be "accept LR, WM, UK" (meaning liberty reserve, web money, ukash, etc.) on vendor forum posts but now the payment method isn't even mentioned since it is assumed to be bitcoin.

<comment><USER4> Thank you -- I was afraid of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The online crime world has a bitter hatred of Krebs, moreso than any other "white hat" out there probably. Numerous malware families include references to him in their source code, control panels, and domain names.

As a security researcher I frequently find botnet command & control panels that have a picture of Krebs' face above the login form. Domain names similar to "briankrebsisachildmolestor.com" are sometimes used to host malware and botnets.

Considering all that, plus the real-life harassment he's gotten (death threats, the heroin framing attempt, SWATing), I hope he invests in a good home security system. Or a security guard.

<comment><USER6> One of the articles profiling him mentioned he recently upgraded to a 12-guage security system.

<comment><USER7> You mean a 12 gauge shotgun?

<comment><USER8> Somehow I don't think a 1 and a half metre long gun is that appropriate for self-defence, if you're worried about people creeping up on you. Maybe I'm wrong, but I can't see much in the way of a quick draw being possible. I guess when you hear the front door being broken down you can be prepared with a robust response.

Or perhaps he has a tiny train for making his getaway, wallace and gromit style?

<comment><USER9> True, a shotgun is not the sort of thing you'd carry for personal defense outside your own property, but for home defense, a 12-gauge pump-action is as good as anything, and better than most -- especially when, as mentioned in the article, you have surveillance cameras at the approaches, so you can see any unwanted guests coming with enough time to prepare for their arrival.

<comment><USER10> The best type of firearm to have for personal defense is the one you have on you, not in your gun safe. The 12-gauge is only beneficial if you're going to carry it with you from room to room, keeping it at your side at all times.. The time between hearing someone kick in your door to being on you is just a few seconds, there's no time to open a safe. So in this type of scenario the 12-gauge isn't bad, but I'd probably still prefer a pistol on an over the waist band or shoulder holster. When you don't need to conceal it's not that difficult to carry around a full sized pistol in any reasonable defense caliber. It appears that this guy is toting his shotgun with him though, so I guess there's that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As an ex-journalist I'm really envious of Krebs' sources and understanding of this space. I also _think_ his background as a journalist (reporting and writing skills) might have allowed him to be far more effective than many others in the space with comparable technical skills.

</comment><comment> rkuykendall-com Great article. Reminded me how amazing it is to explore a "world" online. Often, a world you never knew existed.

</comment><comment><USER12> >called a SWAT team to his home just as his mother was arriving for dinner.

As far as pranks go thats actually pretty good. Better than 4chan's pizzas.

<comment><USER13> Given the current state of policing in the US swatting someone has a non-zero chance of getting someone severally beaten, tazered, tear gassed, or just shot. I don't know of any deaths, but there have been some really close calls reported in the press and and injury plus property damage. I don't think that really qualifies as a good prank, more of a harassment/endangerment tactic.

<comment><USER14> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5928424](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5928424)

[http://www.cato.org/raidmap](http://www.cato.org/raidmap)

Now you know of some deaths

<comment><USER13> Thanks for the map! I should clarify that I was unaware of deaths specifically attributable to a deliberate swatting incident, the death rate in SWAT raids & no-knock raids is ridiculous. It may be much lower than the death rate from "accidental" shootings of even as specific a group as say young black men who turn out to have no criminal record, are unarmed, and aren't engaged in any criminal activity at the time of the incident, but swatting is more outrageous-seeming to most of the majority who have less worry about being shot by the police. I suspect that the fact that it's a deliberate act of endangerment also increases the perceived significance of the risk - malice is more threatening than incompetence even when it's rare and even if it's less dangerous.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Who are these tech executives sitting with Obama? - <AUTHOR> Ask HN: Who are these tech executives sitting with Obama?
Seated at table (http://pasteboard.co/26orWkfn.jpg; clockwise, starting at Obama):
1. Obama
2. Steve Jobs :-)
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9. Larry Ellison
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15. Mark Zuckerberg
Here is the list of confirmed attendees (12 of the 15 at table):
_Carol Bartz, president and CEO, Yahoo
_John Chambers, CEO and chairman, Cisco Systems
_Dick Costolo, CEO, Twitter
_John Doerr, partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Larry Ellison, co-founder and CEO, Oracle
_Reed Hastings, CEO, Netflix
_John Hennessy, president, Stanford University
Steve Jobs, chairman and CEO, Apple
_Art Levinson, chairman and former CEO, Genentech
_Eric Schmidt, chairman and CEO, Google
_Steve Westly, managing partner and founder, The Westly Group
Mark Zuckerberg, founder, president, and CEO, Facebook
Source: 2010 Mercury News article (http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_17415024) <comment><USER2> Quick Google image search shows the full breakdown including bios

[http://www.businessinsider.com/people-at-obamas-tech- dinner-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/people-at-obamas-tech- dinner-2011-2?op=1&IR=T)

<comment><AUTHOR> Well done - thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> 4\. I'd bet on Meg Whitman. Carol Bartz is on the other end of the table, and the only other women tech CEOs are Marissa Mayer and Ginni Rometty, both of whom didn't become CEO until 2012.

5\. Eric Schmidt

6\. Probably Art Levinson

7\. John Chambers

10\. Reed Hastings

12\. Carol Bartz</comment>


IPhone 5S outselling iPhone 5C nearly four to one - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/127294/what-apple-wont-tell-you-the-iphone-5s-is-outselling-the-5c-nearly-four-to-one/

<comment><USER2> It seems reasonable and also sort of expected, as people buying an iPhone would rather go for what best is available than to try and save a 100 dollars.</comment>